Tobi Coventry and Róisín Lanigan in conversation

Blackwell’s Manchester hosts an evening of contemporary housing horror with novelists Tobi Coventry and Róisín Lanigan, in conversation with writer Jodie Matthews. Bringing together two sharply observed debut novels, the event explores fear, belonging and the anxieties of renting in modern Britain.

Coventry’s He’s the Devil is a darkly comic, unsettling story of loneliness and shared living, where an apparently ordinary flat becomes the site of something far stranger. Blending humour with creeping dread, the novel turns the familiar tensions of house-sharing into a modern horror that is both surreal and painfully recognisable.

Lanigan’s I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There offers a ghost story rooted in the rental crisis, following a woman whose new flat promises comfort and stability but instead deepens her sense of isolation. Wry, incisive and emotionally resonant, the novel examines what it means to feel at home when security feels increasingly out of reach.

Together with Matthews, the authors discuss writing horror from everyday experience, the politics of housing, and how domestic spaces can become sites of unease, desire and loss. The conversation offers a thoughtful and darkly funny look at the fears shaping contemporary life.